28 July 2008

What Things Look Like in The Summer in Copenhagen

It's summer. It's beach weather. It's sticky hot all day and all night. In Copenhagen we're spoiled for beaches and, like anywhere else, we flock to them whenever we can.What checking a text message at a red light heading home from the beach looks like in The Copenhagen Summer.What a red light looks like in in The Copenhagen Summer.What waiting for the elevator at the Metro at the beach looks like in The Copenhagen Summer.What heading home from the beach looks like in The Copenhagen Summer.What parking at the beach looks like in The Copenhagen Summer. [At this beach there are 5000 bike rack spaces - and about 10,000 bikes]What beach parking overflow looks like in The Copenhagen Summer.

Copenhagen is unique in that it is a large city - 1.9 million - but there are a couple of smaller cities that profile themselves as cycling cities. Odense and Aarhus. But they're small.

Sweden and Norway are not generally regarded as great cycling nations, but Sweden's third city Malmo, has about 25% bike usage rates - but then they're only 30 minutes by train from Copenhagen, so maybe it rubbed off... :-)

Norway isnt' bad. Trondheim in the north has about 8% bike usage despite mountains and snowy winters.

Copenhagen can really only be compared to Amsterdam, other cities in the Netherlands, various cities in Germany and Switzerland.

Agreed with cyclingred. Bicycle parking overflowing at the beach! I've never seen that before and it's a couple of amazing photos to look at. It's the complete opposite to the beaches I've seen in the states that are swarmed with angry car and SUV drivers trying to get closer and closer to the beach. Grrr.

The abundant bicycle parking at the beach is really quite inspirational. My friend from Montreal was just complaining to me that there's never anywhere to park your bike in SF.

We're working on it though! The Bicycle Coalition often provides free and secure valet bike parking at special events and ballgames, which is quite handy! Never seen ANYTHING as phenomenal as what you've shown in these photos though.

That is a pretty orange bike in one picture ! What kind of bike is it ? I live in the US, near the beaches in New Jersey. I decided I would check out a way to get to the beach by bike by first riding the route to the bike trail in my car. All of the roads going to the bike trail have no bike lanes (a given) and no shoulder at all. How is it in the rest of Denmark outside of major cities ? Are there bike lanes on what we would call suburban arterials here ? (But I really want to know about the orange bike !).